China on Tuesday returned the US unmanned underwater drone it seized last week in the South China Sea, officials said.
CNN cited a Chinese Defence Ministry statement as saying:
After friendly consultations between China and the US, the transfer of the underwater drone was smoothly completed.
According to the Pentagon, the US would continue to investigate the events surrounding the incident.
After a Chinese warship recently seized the underwater drone deployed by a US oceanographic vessel in the South China Sea, President-elect Donald Trump responded to the incident by telling China to “keep it”.
The event had triggered a formal diplomatic protest and a demand for its return, but Trump, in his usual fashion, tweeted:
China had rejected Trump's charge that it "stole" the drone, saying the device was picked up to prevent "harm" to freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea, from where Beijing claims the US is spying on Chinese coast.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a media briefing on Monday:
First of all we did not like the word stealing. This is also not accurate.
Trump’s comment undermines the Pentagon’s concern over the seizure of its military property.
The drone was part of an unclassified program to collect oceanographic data including salinity, temperature, and clarity of the water, a US official said, which provides information to the US military about sonar data.
The incident, the first of its kind, took place on 15 December, about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines just as the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was about to retrieve the unmanned, underwater vehicle (UUV), officials said.
The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea. It’s a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water – that it was US property.
The Pentagon had confirmed the incident at a news briefing. It said the drone used commercially available technology and sold for about $150,000.
It is ours, and it is clearly marked as ours and we would like it back. And we would like this not to happen again.Jeff Davis, Pentagon Spokesperson
The seizure by the Chinese Navy will add to concerns about China's growing military presence and aggressive posture in the disputed South China Sea, including its militarisation of maritime outposts.
Recently, a US think tank released satellite images that indicated China has installed weapons, including anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, on all seven artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow in the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said China would have a hard time explaining its actions.
“This move, if accurately reported, is highly escalatory, and it is hard to see how Beijing will justify it legally,” Rapp-Hooper said.
(With inputs from Reuters and IANS)
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